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Neurosciences Seminars & Events

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Neurosciences Gateway

The University of Utah’s top-rated physicians and researchers are at the forefront
of neuroscience: pioneering treatments in health care, breaking ground in imaging
techniques, and designing new solutions for brain and spinal cord repair. The Neurosciences
Gateway is a portal to discovering the U of U’s areas of neuroscience expertise, distributed
among 17 departments and 15 centers and institutes.

Launched in Fall, 2014, the Neuroscience Initiative unites the academic, translational, and clinical neuroscience communities toward
the common goals of better understanding the brain in disease and in health. Learn more.

ADD Program Symposium (May 17-19, 2015): Therapy Development in the Era of Team Science & Big Data: What Will the Future Bring
to the Patient with Epilepsy? Park City Marriot, Park City UT. http://addsymposium.com/

Funding Opportunities:

Neuroscience Initiative Collaborative Pilot Project seed grants: The initiative seeks
to further its mission by funding collaborative pilot projects in the neurosciences.
Our first call for proposals, due April 17, 2015, can be accessed here and will open starting March 15th on the University of Utah’s CompetitionSpace.

University of Utah researchers have received $1.4 million to further develop an implantable
neural interface that will allow an amputee to move an advanced prosthetic hand with
just his or her thoughts. The neural interface will also convey feelings of touch
and movement.

Called the Utah Slanted Electrode Array, the neural interface uses 100 electrodes
that connect with nerves in an amputee’s arm to read signals from the brain telling
the hand how to move. Likewise, the neural interface delivers meaningful sensations
of touch and movement from a prosthetic hand back to the brain. READ MORE

New Insights Into Causes of ALS

University of Utah neurologists Summer Gibson, M.D., and Stefan Pulst, M.D., are authors on a collaborative, multi-institutional study published in the journal
Science. The research identifies mutations in a gene, TBK1, as contributing to ALS. Taken together with previous findings, the discovery highlights
defects in biological pathways – autophagy and inflammation - as potential key players
in development of the disease.

"This is particularly important because TBK1 is involved in the same natural immunity
and autophagy pathways as two other previously identified ALS genes, optineurin (OPTN)
and p62 (SQSTM1/sequestosome)," says Gibson. Autophagy in particular may be important
for destruction of prion-like structures that accumulate in the brains of some patients.
The findings suggest a novel course of therapeutic interventions for treating the
disease.